Saturday, January 22, 2005

Christopher takes a test

A little while ago I was with a friend, lamenting the fact that I don't really have a "thing" - a party trick. I can't play Rach 5 on the piano with one hand and I can't ride a unicycle. I speak practically zero foreign languages and I have yet to correctly learn the offside rule. My friend assured me that every single person does have at least one "thing" and that maybe it would be a little while longer before I worked out what mine was and that I just had to be patient.

So rather than chastising myself for not having a special thing I have, as you know, been putting my all into finding a job. But PR work has not been forthcoming. I incorrectly assumed that it would be a piece of cake to find a new job in the New Year. Things were really thin on the ground before Christmas but that's not surprising really because human resources managers can't be arsed to recruit, choosing (sensibly) to sink pitchers of mulled wine instead.

But once staffers have banked and spunked away their Christmas bonuses they promptly hand their notices in on Jan 2, right? And all those HR peeps suddenly have a purpose in life (with several neurotic MD's breathing down their necks). Only the trend seems to have been bucked and jobs are still few and far between. Ok, I have been for a few interviews in the last couple of weeks and I actually have another on Monday. But the companies I have seen are invariably rather small and I am to them, without wanting to sound like a twat, a bigger gun. I'm a Senior Account Director with almost nine years experience of working for an international company. Two of those years were spent working in New York. In my time I have been incredibly lucky enough to have had some of the biggest companies in the world as my clients - brand icons that a few of my fellow PR buddies would have killed to work on. My career has also allowed me to meet and schmooze with the likes of Sharon Stone, Charlize Theron, Sean Penn, Robert D Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Adrien Brody and has also given me the chance to use J-Lo's Beverly Hills pad's bathroom - which, incidentally, you can completely see into from the road outside. All immensely satisfying and has richly fed my inner starfucker. So anyway, my CV is kind of impressive and to these smaller agencies, perhaps a little imposing.

Of course, this all disguises the fact that very often I don't have the slightest clue what I am doing.

Anyway, I often get the impression that the owners of these seven / eight person gigs only ask to see me out of curiosity and because they think I might be able to lure some old clients into coming over with me (not a hope in hell!)

I have no doubt that something will eventually come up, but the more immediate problem at the moment is that I am absolutely financially destitute. I have never been in such a bad way where money is concerned. Without citing actual figures, I have a personal debt that would make even Donald Trump weep. But for some reason I don't get down about it. Considering some of the things that I do allow myself to get down over this is an irony that is not completely lost on me.

So I decided to bite the bullet. I have to do something and unemployment benefit in the UK is just a big fat joke. So I signed on with a basic admin recruitment agency - the kind that pays £8 an hour for menial Microsoft Excel data entry. I sent my CV over to the girl, Tanya, the other day and I went in this morning for a Microsoft proficiency test.

But before I do the test we have a little chat so that Tanya can get a better idea of what it is I want to do. This seems slightly ridiculous to me, because this is not the kind of company that is going to be able to dramatically boost your career - it's a filler for graduates and recently arrived travelers. But this is Tanya's job so I humour her.

"I have to say that I was very impressed by your CV. You're very senior and have so much experience. Are you really going to be ok with data entry placements? Are you going to be motivated?"

Er, no!?

"Well, you know I am looking for a more permanent mooring in my proper line of work, but you know how it is ... gotta bring home the bacon!" I cheerily tell her. "Besides, sometimes I quite like mindless work - I can kind of get lost in it, do you know what I mean?"

She nods.

"Right Christopher. I'm going to set you up on this computer so that you can do an aptitude test. Make sure that you read the questions properly, because you only get two chances to get each question right. Some of them have hidden meanings!" she tells me cryptically. I'm excited to learn that Word and Excel have hidden depths! (This may or may not be true, but I once read that if you type "I'd like to see Bill Gates dead" in Word, then highlight it and do a thesaurus check then the computers suggests "I'll drink to that" as a replacement!)

So Tanya leaves me in this horrible sterile little cubicle and as I start the test I begin to get a feel of what data entry really means and how it will quietly gnaw away at my soul with it's mindless mediocrity. And the mouse isn't working properly.

The test was dead easy, even though I did come a cropper on a couple of Excel questions and that frikkin mouse caused me to hit the wrong button twice on one of the Word questions. Anyway, I completed the whole thing in about fifteen minutes without breaking a sweat. I stuck my head around the side of the cubicle and did a little "ahem" to get Tanya's attention.

"Have you finished already? Surely you can't have finished already?"

I decide that this means that I have probably failed and that once again my fondness for doing every single thing in life at light speed has resulted in my not being able to even secure a bloody temporary career in data entry.

Tanya leans over me and taps away and in a few seconds the printer sat next to the computer is churning out my test results.

She picks the sheet up and studies it for a second. The indifferent look on her face morphs into a look of dumbstruck awe. "Er, have you had a lot of training on Microsoft Office?"

"Not really. I just gradually taught myself the basics over the years."

"Well, I think this is probably the highest score we've seen. Seriously! Look!"

She flips the sheet of paper around so that I can see it. Word 93% proficiency, Excel 89% proficiency. I act all non-plussed, but inside I am deeply relishing the fact that I am not a computer pleb.

"So what is the average?" I ask her.

"Well what we would consider to be a high score is about 75% for both Word and Excel. That's usually someone who has had a lot of training."

I carry on letting her inflate my ego a little bit more, but then after a while it's time for me to leave. I plug myself into my iPod and breezily walk up Kingsway to the strains of Damien Rice, allowing myself the momentary luxury of feeling a tad smug.

And then it hit me...

I’d finally found my special thing … I frikkin ROCK at data entry!

Now, you better know that if you and I should ever go head to head in a data entry contest, I will take you down, baby!.

*sobs*

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